Manning Marable
There
are today over two million Americans incarcerated in federal and state prisons
and local jails throughout the United States. More than one-half, or one
million, are black men and women. The devastating human costs of the mass
incarceration of one out of every thirty-five individuals within black America
are beyond imagination. While civil rights organizations like the NAACP and
black institutions such as churches and mosques have begun to address this
widespread crisis of black mass imprisonment, they have frankly not given it the
centrality and importance it deserves.
Black
leadership throughout this country should place this issue at the forefront of
their agendas. And we also need to understand how and why American society
reached this point of constructing a vast prison industrial complex, in order to
find strategies to dismantle it.
For
a variety of reasons, rates of violent crime, including murder, rape and
robbery, increased dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s. Much of this increase
occurred in urban areas. By the late 1970s, nearly one half of all Americans
were afraid to walk within a mile of their homes at night, and 90 percent
responded in surveys that the U.S. criminal justice system was not dealing
harshly enough with criminals. Politicians like Richard M. Nixon, George Wallace
and Ronald Reagan began to campaign successfully on the theme of “Law and
Order.” The death penalty, which was briefly outlawed by the Supreme Court,
was reinstated. Local, state and federal expenditures for law enforcement rose
sharply.
Behind
much of anti-crime rhetoric was a not-too-subtle racial dimension, the
projection of crude stereotypes about the link between criminality and black
people. Rarely did these politicians observe that minority and poor people, not
the white middle class, were statistically much more likely to experience
violent crimes of all kinds. The argument was made that law enforcement officers
should be given much greater latitude in suppressing crime, that sentences
should be lengthened and made mandatory, and that prisons should be designed not
for the purpose of rehabilitation, but punishment.
Consequently,
there was a rapid expansion in the personnel of the criminal justice system, as
well as the construction of new prisons. What occurred in New York State, for
example, was typical of what happened nationally. From 1817 to 1981, New York
had opened 33 state prisons. From 1982 to 1999, another 38 state prisons were
constructed. The state’s prison population at the time of the Attica prison
revolt in September 1971 was about 12,500. By 1999, there were over 71,000
prisoners in New York State correctional facilities.
In
1974, the number of Americans incarcerated in all state prisons stood at
187,500. By 1991, the number had reached 711,700. Nearly two-thirds of all state
prisoners in 1991 had less than a high school education. One third of all
prisoners were unemployed at the time of their arrests. Incarceration rates by
the end of the 1980s had soared to unprecedented rates, especially for black
Americans. As of December 1989, the total U.S. prison population, including
federal institutions, exceeded one million for the first time in history, an
incarceration rate of the general population of one out of every 250 citizens.
For
African Americans, the rate was over 700 per 100,000, or about seven times more
than for whites. About one half of all prisoners were black. Twenty-three
percent of all black males in their twenties were either in jail or prison, on
parole, probation or awaiting trial. The rate of incarceration of black
Americans in 1989 had even surpassed that experienced by blacks who still lived
under the apartheid regime of South Africa.
By
the early 1990s, rates for all types of violent crime began to plummet. But the
laws, which sent offenders to prison, were made even more severe. Children were
increasingly viewed in courts as adults, and subjected to harsher penalties.
Laws like California’s “three strikes and you’re out” eliminated the
possibility of parole for repeat offenders. The vast majority of these new
prisoners were non-violent offenders, and many of these were convicted of drug
offenses that carried long prison terms. In New York, a state in which African
Americans and Latinos comprise 25 percent of the total population, by 1999 they
represented 83 percent of all state prisoners, and 94 percent of all individuals
convicted on drug offenses.
The
pattern of racial bias in these statistics is confirmed by the research of the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which found that while African Americans today
constitute only 14 percent of all drug users nationally, they are 35 percent of
all drug arrests, 55 percent of all drug convictions, and 75 percent of all
prison admissions for drug offenses. Currently, the racial proportions of those
under some type of correctional supervision, including parole and probation, are
one-in-fifteen for young white males, one-in-ten for young Latino males, and
one-in-three for young African-American males. Statistically today, more than
eight out of every ten African-American males will be arrested at some point in
their lifetime.
The
latest innovation in American corrections is termed “special housing units”
(SHU), but which prisoners also generally refer to as The Box. SHUs are uniquely
designed solitary confinement cells, in which prisoners are locked down for 23
hours a day for months or even years at a time. SHU cellblocks are
electronically monitored, prefabricated structures of concrete and steel, about
14 feet long and 8 ½ feet wide, amounting to 120 square feet of space. The two
inmates who are confined in each cell, however, actually have only about 60
square feet of usable space, or 30 square feet per person.
All
meals are served to prisoners through a thin slot cut into the steel door. The
toilet unit, sink and shower are all located in the cell. Prisoners are
permitted one hour “exercise time” each day in a small concrete balcony,
surrounded by heavy security wire, directly connected with their SHU cells.
Educational and rehabilitation programs for SHU prisoners are prohibited.
As
of 1998, New York State had confined 5,700 state prisoners in SHUs, about 8
percent of its total inmate population. Currently under construction in Upstate
New York is a new 750-cell maximum security SHU facility, which will cost state
taxpayers $180 million. Although Amnesty International and human rights groups
in the U.S. have widely condemned SHUs, claiming that such forms of imprisonment
constitute the definition of torture under international law, other states have
followed New York’s example. As of 1998, California had constructed 2,942 SHU
beds, followed by Mississippi (1,756), Arizona (1,728), Virginia (1,267), Texas
(1,229), Louisiana (1,048) and Florida (1,000). Solitary confinement, which
historically had been defined even by corrections officials as an extreme
disciplinary measure, is becoming increasingly the norm.
The
introduction of SHUs reflects a general mood in the country that the growing
penal population is essentially beyond redemption. If convicted felons cease to
be viewed as human beings, why should they be treated with any humanity? This
question should be elevated and discussed in every African-American and Latino
neighborhood, community center, religious institution and union hall across this
country. Because the overwhelming human casualties of this racist leviathan are
our own children, parents, sisters and brothers. Those whom this brutal system
defines as being “beyond redemption” are ourselves.
—
What
are the economic costs for American society of the vast expansion of our
prison-industrial complex? According to criminal justice researcher David Barlow
at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, between 1980 and 2000, the combined
expenditures of federal, state and local governments on police have increased
about 400 percent. Corrections expenditures for building new prisons, upgrading
existing facilities, hiring more guards, and related costs, increased
approximately one thousand percent. Although it currently costs about $70,000 to
construct a typical prison cell, and about $25,000 annually to supervise and
maintain each prisoner, the U.S. is currently building 1,725 new prison beds per
week.
The
driving ideological and cultural force that rationalized and justifies mass
incarceration is the white American public’s stereotypical perceptions about
race and crime. As Andrew Hacker perceptively noted in 1995, “Quite clearly,
‘black crime’ does not make people think about tax evasion or embezzling
from brokerage firms. Rather, the offenses generally associated with blacks are
those . . . involving violence.” A number of researchers have found that
racial stereotypes of African Americans—as “violent,” “aggressive,”
“hostile” and “short-tempered”—greatly influence whites’ judgments
about crime. Generally, most whites are inclined to give black and Latino
defendants more severe judgments of guilt and lengthier prison sentences than
whites who commit identical crimes. Racial bias has been well established
especially in capital cases, where killers of white victims are much more likely
to receive the death penalty than those who murder African Americans.
The
greatest victims of these racialized processes of unequal justice, of course,
are African-American and Latino young people. In April 2000, utilizing national
and state data compiled by the FBI, the Justice Department and six leading
foundations issued a comprehensive study that documented vast racial disparities
at every level of the juvenile justice process. African Americans under age 18
comprise 15 percent of their national age group, yet they currently represent 26
percent of all those who are arrested.
After
entering the criminal justice system, white and black juveniles with the same
records are treated in radically different ways. According to the Justice
Department’s study, among white youth offenders, 66 percent are referred to
juvenile courts, while only 31 percent of the African-American youth are taken
there. Blacks comprise 44 percent of those detained in juvenile jails, 46
percent of all those tried in adult criminal courts, as well as 58 percent of
all juveniles who are warehoused in adult prison. In practical terms, this means
that for young African Americans who are arrested and charged with a crime, that
they are more than six times more likely to be assigned to prison that white
youth offenders.
For
those young people who have never been to prison before, African Americans are
nine times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prisons. For
youths charged with drug offenses, blacks are 48 times more likely than whites
to be sentenced to juvenile prison. White youths charged with violent offenses
are incarcerated on average for 193 days after trial; by contrast,
African-American youths are held 254 days, and Latino youths are incarcerated
305 days.
What
seems clear is that a new leviathan of racial inequality has been constructed
across our country. It lacks the brutal simplicity of the old Jim Crow system,
with its omnipresent “white” and “colored” signs. Yet it is in many
respects potentially far more devastating, because it presents itself to the
world as a system that is truly color-blind. The black freedom struggle of the
1960s was successful largely because it convinced a majority of white middle
class Americans that it was economically inefficient, and that politically it
could not be sustained or justified.
The
movement utilized the power of creative disruption, making it impossible for the
old system of white prejudice and power to function in the same old ways it had
for decades. For Americans who still believe in racial equality and social
justice, we cannot stand silent while millions of our fellow citizens are being
destroyed all around us. The racialized prison industrial complex is the great
moral and political challenge of our time.
For
several years, I have lectured in New York’s famous Sing Sing prison, as part
of a master’s degree program sponsored by the New York Theological Seminary.
During my last visit several months ago, I noticed that correctional officials
had erected a large yellow sign over the door at the public entrance to the
prison. The sign reads: “Through these doors pass some of the finest
corrections professionals in the world.” I asked Reverend Bill Webber, the
director of the prison’s educational program, and several prisoners what they
thought about the sign. Bill answered bluntly, “demonic.” One of the M.A.
students, a 35-year-old Latino named Tony, agreed with Bill’s assessment, but
added, “let us face the demon head on.” There are now over two million
Americans who are incarcerated. It is time to face the demon head on.
Dr.
Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science, and the
Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia
University.